


Pink As Peach

by Ghanima_Starkiller



Category: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-05
Updated: 2013-02-05
Packaged: 2017-11-28 06:29:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/671361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghanima_Starkiller/pseuds/Ghanima_Starkiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Balancing politics and relationships based upon love is a tricky act, especially for a newly crowned queen and a low-born confidant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pink As Peach

She walked at his side through the grove—peach trees now, for she was quite put off of apples. And always he marveled, because the light inside of her shone through ever more, her head unbowed by the crown she now wore but strengthened for it. All of the world seemed not to bow to her, but to respond, for she was truly was as fair as nature itself and as fixed to her as leaves to a tree, or doe to stag.

She had made her declaration that morning, and there had been protests. She always preferred Eric’s company at such times, for she knew that he would challenge her, but he would not presume to tell her her own mind; he knew her too well for that. The others meant well, they did. For she saw only good in those she surrounded herself with. There would be no prince consort, she had told them, patient during the uproar, growing intolerant with every passing moment that they did not quiet until Eric had taken her arm and led her away before she could call for quiet in her unsubtle way.

“William will be disappointed,” Eric commented, his thick, brawny arms crossed over his chest casually, towering over his companion as she stooped to pick little flowers and release them on the wind.

“Yeah, well…,” she retorted, “he’ll just have to learn to live with disappointment, then.” He raised an eyebrow. She could sound so alike the Huntsman sometimes, and that made him wonder if that was from time spent in his company, or if they fought and laughed together so well because, beneath that pleasing countenance of hers, she was also as tempestuous as he was. There was a moment of silence, and then Eric barked a laugh, making her smile and chuckle as well, breaking the tension that had been evident in her slim shoulders since they had walked away.

“Who-who says I’d marry William, anyway?” she added, folding her own arms over her bosom, and then letting them fall away when she realized she was mirroring Eric’s posture. She had used Ravenna in argument, that it had been a growing bitterness that had made her as she was; and that was countered with the dispute that Ravenna had tried to rule alone and had become a tyrant. That was when Eric’s voice had at last boomed through the hall in protest:

“Would you believe that Queen Snow White could ever be a tyrant?”

The court’s councilors bristled, chief among them, William’s father; the resentment between him and the Huntsman was mutual and only thinly concealed. William alone showed no open animosity, though Eric’s constant presence began to wear on him for other motivations. Perhaps he understood those reasons better than Snow White and Eric themselves did.

“Who then?” Eric goaded her now, still chortling a little. “The round little money man? Or the tall, gaunt one with the forked beard—oh, truly, I think that might be a stunning match!” Snow White laughed quietly again, this time more softly, nudging her elbow into him. But she didn’t answer. “I married well.”

“You married for love,” answered Snow White. “Do you think that… politics and love can exist, hand in hand?” she asked, and the query took him so by surprise, his face was so remarkable, it made her laugh harder as she stopped in the shade of a blossoming tree and leaned against the trunks smooth bark. “Eric, sometimes it seems you go ‘round and ‘round,” she scoffed, furrowing her brow as she considered each word, “and somehow you… miss the obvious conclusion.”

She had been bold once before, in that sweetly innocent way that girls discover their womanhood: she had kissed William. Save that it had not been William; it had been Ravenna’s savage trickery. She felt bold once more, but it was not that sweet sort of tentative caress she desired. She had never told him, but she remembered it all, under Ravenna’s spell, what he had said to her while she lay there, to all appearances, dead. And she had felt his lips on hers. A tender thing, a man’s thing, intimate, invigorating, beautiful. Life-giving.

Reaching up, she picked a peach from a low-hanging branch and, briefly raising it to her face, brushed it under her nose, against her lips, smiling a secret sort of pleasure. She held it out to him, and with the newfound confidence of a queen, she told him, “You’ll find it eventually.” And she left him there, holding the piece of fruit in his hand, turning it over, wondering if he truly understood her meaning.

***

He sits, contemplating the peach, not daring to bite into its soft flesh, for the entirety of the day, as the sun, wavers and falls to the horizon, giving one last golden flare before it turns a prophetic red and disappears into a dull sort of armor gray. Only then, in the darkness, does he taste the peach, as she had done, lifting it to his nose and mouth, inhaling the sweet fragrance, feeling the softly furred surface like skin tickle his lips. He savors the sensation, thinking on how Snow white is so pale—white as snow—that, when she flushes, unlike other girls, she does not turn red, or even pink, but the lovely, fine shade of the peach.

He parts his lips, letting them rest gently on the surface, his tongue darting out to skim it, to take the first, small sample of its tender skin; his nose, the tip of it, nudges at the fruit’s natural cleft, wondering what design nature had in mind when it made anything so beautiful. He lets them wetly suction onto it before his teeth sink in and his mouth is flooded with fresh syrup. He keeps it like that, the juice surging with each small movement of his mouth, his tongue pressing against the flesh, saliva mingling with the flood of thick nectar.

And then he takes the bite, and his mouth is already covering the raw, exposed puncture, licking devouring the juice, laving at the bare flesh, which is a deeper shade, so lovely, so… intimate. He tried not to think on it, to wonder what is making this such a divine, unworldly experience. But he knows. He knows even then he will go to her that night, and knock upon her chamber door. Will anyone stop him? What if he has misread her? She will send him away, nothing more.

The tang of the peach is so pungent on his tongue, he wants more, and more, parting it with his fingers to suck at its delicate core, licking the nectar running from his hand, against his callused palm. His finger probes where he has pulled the pit, the hollow, wet and warm and so supple, smooth.

***

She opened the door, and her cheeks were instantly that same shade of peach; his body was set alight by the sight of it as he reached out to touch her hair, tenderly, with all of the gentleness his size and rough manner withhold. The peach was nothing in comparison to the genuine encounter, pushing the skirt of her silken nightgown above her knees, and then up to her waist, as he caressed her velvety skin, pressed his lips there, everywhere.

And he tasted the fruit he truly desired, forbidden though it may be—but not by her; now never by her. She trembled, and cried out, the warmth from her heart spreading out like a fever to her fingertips, down her legs. A bird sang in the night as she cried out for the last time, her fingers entwined with his larger, coarse ones, balmy palm to palm. And the peach trees flowered, and bloomed, and everyone who tasted the fruit they bore commented that they had never tasted a sweeter peach in all their lives.

Each time, Eric would meet Snow white’s eye, and hers, so blue they shamed the ocean, would drop modestly to the floor, and that secret smile, now a woman’s would light up her face. and he would agree. Most heartily.


End file.
